Deaths Elsewhere

Deaths Elsewhere

Eddie Gallaher, 89, a disc jockey for more than half a century in Washington, D.C., died yesterday at an assisted care facility there after suffering complications from hip replacement surgery.

Mr. Gallaher's career in Washington began on WTOP-AM in 1947. In an industry known for high turnover, he stayed on the air in one market for 53 years - leaving WTOP after its 1968 switch to a news-and-talk format, moving first to WASH-FM and, from 1982 until 2000, to WWDC-AM.

Soon after arriving in Washington, Mr. Gallaher replaced legendary broadcaster Arthur Godfrey, who went on to CBS in New York. Mr. Gallaher was host of the Sundial program in the morning and the Moondial show at night. His baritone voice became legendary, and in 2000 he joked to The Washington Post, "I gargle with Drano."

"When stars would come to town - Jayne Mansfield, Bob Hope, I don't care who it was - they would line up to be interviewed by Eddie Gallaher," recalled AP Radio anchor Ross Simpson, who met Mr. Gallaher in 1965 while doing the news on his Saturday morning WTOP show.

Mr. Kleiner played a pivotal role in building Silicon Valley, first as a scientist, then as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. In the 1950s, he helped lay the groundwork for one of Silicon Valley's seminal companies, Fairchild Semiconductor.

The company revolutionized the chip industry and became an entrepreneurial breeding ground, hatching Intel Corp., National Semiconductor and Advanced Micro Devices.

During the early 1970s, Mr. Kleiner founded one of nation's most powerful venture capital firms, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers, which has financed a long line of high-tech powerhouses, including Sun Microsystems, Tandem Computers, Compaq Computer and Amazon.com.

A native Austrian who fled Europe before World War II, Mr. Kleiner settled in California during the mid-1950s after being recruited by Nobel Prize winner William Shockley to help build computer transistors.

David "Tom" Stern III, 94, a former newspaper publisher in New York and Philadelphia whose novel Francis, the Talking Mule inspired a film series, died Saturday in San Francisco.

Mr. Stern spent 30 years in the newspaper business, filling management positions at the New York Post, Philadelphia Record and Courier Post in Camden, N.J. In 1949, he and some associates bought the New Orleans Item, which he ran until 1958.

As an Army captain during World War II, Mr. Stern helped publish Stars and Stripes for soldiers. It was during the war that he came up with the idea for a novel about a talking mule named Francis.

The book told the story of a gifted Army mule whose advice to a bumbling young lieutenant wins battles and astounds the high brass. He wrote screenplays for the series of Francis, the Talking Mule films that starred Donald O'Connor between 1949 and 1956.

W. Fred Turner, 81, the attorney who successfully defended Clarence Earl Gideon in a U.S. Supreme Court-mandated retrial in 1963, which resulted in the creation of the American public defender system, died Monday in Panama City, Fla.

The landmark case began at a pool hall in 1961 when a patron told police he saw Mr. Gideon, then 50, steal change and cases of beer, wine and Coke before leaving in a cab. Mr. Gideon repeatedly asked for a court-appointed attorney, but a judge denied his request.

After writing a petition to the Supreme Court that Mr. Gideon should have had a lawyer, the justices ruled that criminal defendants are entitled to legal representation even if they cannot afford it. The case resulted in the creation of public defender systems nationwide.

Mr. Turner won an acquittal in the second trial. He asked jurors how Mr. Gideon could have made off with several drinks cases when the cab driver testified he had nothing with him.

Teddy Wilburn, 71, half of the country music duo the Wilburn Brothers, died Monday in Nashville.

Mr. Wilburn and his brother, Doyle, who died in 1982, had 30 songs on the country charts from 1955 to 1972, including the hits "Hurt Her Once for Me," "Trouble's Back in Town" and "Roll, Muddy River."

Teddy Wilburn was born in the Ozark Mountain community of Hardy, Ark. The brothers first performed publicly at ages 6 and 5 with the Wilburn Family band.

After recording on Decca records as the Wilburn Brothers, Teddy and Doyle joined the Grand Ole Opry cast.

Between 1963 and 1974, the Wilburn Brothers were hosts of one of country music's first syndicated color TV shows.